Back Aa

Merton of the Movies

<h2> CHAPTER XI. THE MONTAGUE GIRL INTERVENES </h2> He came to life the next morning, shivering under his blankets. It must be cold outside. He glanced at his watch and reached for another blanket, throwing it over himself and tucking it in at the foot. Then he lay down again to screen a tense bit of action that had occurred late the night before. He had plunged through the streets for an hour, after leaving the pool, striving to recover from the twin shocks he had suffered. Then, returning to his hotel, he became aware that The Hazards of Hortense were still on. He could hear the roar of the aeroplane propeller and see the lights over the low buildings that lined his street. Miserably he was drawn back to the spot where the most important of all his visions had been rent to tatters. He went to the end of the pool where he had stood before. Mr. Rosenblatt-hardly could he bring his mind to utter the hideous syllables-was still dissatisfied with the sea's might. He wanted bigger billows and meant to have them if the company stayed on the set all night. He was saying as much with peevish inflections. Merton stood warming himself over the fire that still glowed in the brazier. To him from somewhere beyond the scaffold came now the Montague girl and Jimmie. The girl was in her blanket, and Jimmie bore a pitcher, two tin cups, and a package of sandwiches. They came to the fire and Jimmie poured coffee for the girl. He produced sugar from a pocket. "Help yourself, James," said the girl, and Jimmie poured coffee for himself. They ate sandwiches as they drank. Merton drew a little back from the fire. The scent of the hot coffee threatened to make him forget he was not only a successful screen actor but a gentleman. "Did you have to do it again?" he asked. "I had to do it twice again," said the girl from over her tin cup. "They're developing the strips now, then they'll run them in the projection room, and they won't suit Sig one little bit, and I'll have to do it some more. I'll be swimming here till daylight doth appear." She now shot that familiar glance of appraisal at Merton. "Have a sandwich and some coffee, Kid-give him your cup, Jimmie." It was Merton Gill's great moment, a heart-gripping climax to a two-days' drama that had at no time lacked tension. Superbly he arose to it. Consecrated to his art, Clifford Armytage gave the public something better and finer. He drew himself up and spoke lightly, clearly, with careless ease: "No, thanks-I couldn't eat a mouthful." The smile with which he accompanied the simple words might be enigmatic, it might hint of secret sorrows, but it was plain enough that these could not ever so distantly relate to a need for food. Having achieved this sensational triumph, with all the quietness of method that should distinguish the true artist, he became seized with stage fright amounting almost to panic. He was moved to snatch the sandwich that Jimmie now proffered, the cup that he had refilled with coffee. Yet there was but a moment of confusion. Again he wielded an iron restraint. But he must leave the stage. He could not tarry there after his big scene, especially under that piercing glance of the girl. Somehow there was incredulity in it. "Well, I guess I'll have to be going," he remarked jauntily, and turned for his exit. "Say, Kid." The girl halted him a dozen feet away. "Say, listen here. This is on the level. I want to have a talk with you to-morrow. You'll be on the lot, won't you?" He seemed to debate this momentarily, then replied, "Oh, yes. I'll be around here somewhere." "Well, remember, now. If I don't run into you, you come down to that set where I was working to-day. See? I got something to say to you." "All right. I'll probably see you sometime during the day." He had gone on to his hotel. But he had no intention of seeing the Montague girl on the morrow, nor of being seen by her. He would keep out of that girl's way whatever else he did. She would ask him if everything was jake, and where was his overcoat, and a lot of silly questions about matters that should not concern her. He was in two minds about the girl now. Beneath an unreasonable but very genuine resentment that she should have doubled for Beulah Baxter-as if she had basely cheated him of his most cherished ideal-there ran an undercurrent of reluctant but very profound admiration for her prowess. She had done some thrilling things and seemed to make nothing of it. Through this admiration there ran also a thread of hostility because he, himself, would undoubtedly be afraid to attempt her lightest exploit. Not even the trifling feat he had just witnessed, for he had never learned to swim. But he clearly knew, despite this confusion, that he was through with the girl. He must take more pains to avoid her. If met by chance, she must be snubbed-up-staged, as she would put it. Under his blankets now, after many appealing close-ups of the sandwich which Jimmie had held out to him, he felt almost sorry that he had not taken the girl's food. All his being, save that part consecrated to his art, had cried out for it. Art, had triumphed, and now he was near to regretting that it had not been beaten down. No good thinking about it, though. He reached again for his watch. It was seven-thirty and time to be abroad. Once more he folded his blankets and placed them on the pile, keeping an alert glance, the while, for another possible bit of the delicious bread. He found nothing of this sort. The Crystal Palace Hotel was bare of provender. Achieving a discreet retirement from the hostelry he stood irresolute in the street. This morning there was no genial sun to warm him. A high fog overcast the sky, and the air was chill. At intervals he shivered violently. For no reason, except that he had there last beheld actual food, he went back to the pool. Evidently Mr. Rosenblatt had finally been appeased. The place was deserted and lay bare and ugly in the dull light. The gallant ship of the night before was seen to be a poor, flimsy make-shift. No wonder Mr. Rosenblatt had wished billows to engulf it and mist to shroud it. He sat on a beam lying at the ship end of the pool and stared moodily at the pitiful make-believe. He rounded his shoulders and pulled up the collar of his coat. He knew he should be walking, but doubted his strength. The little walk to the pool had made him strangely breathless. He wondered how long people were in starving to death. He had read of fasters who went for weeks without food, but he knew he was not of this class. He lacked talent for it. Doubtless another day would finish him. He had no heart now for visions of the Gashwiler table. He descended tragically to recalling that last meal at the drug store-the bowl of soup with its gracious burden of rich, nourishing catsup. He began to alter the scenario of his own life. Suppose he had worked two more weeks for Gashwiler. That would have given him thirty dollars. Suppose he had worked a month. He could have existed a long time on sixty dollars. Suppose he had even stuck it out for one week more-fifteen dollars at this moment! He began to see a breakfast, the sort of meal to be ordered by a hungry man with fifteen dollars to squander. The shivering seized him again and he heard his teeth rattle. He must move from this spot, forever now to be associated with black disillusion. He arose from his seat and was dismayed to hear a hail from the Montague girl. Was he never to be free from her? She was poised at a little distance, one hand raised to him, no longer the drenched victim of a capricious Rosenblatt, but the beaming, joyous figure of one who had triumphed over wind and wave. He went almost sullenly to her while she waited. No good trying to escape her for a minute or so. "Hello, old Trouper! You're just in time to help me hunt for something." She was in the familiar street suit now, a skirt and jacket of some rough brown goods and a cloth hat that kept close to her small head above hair that seemed of no known shade whatever, though it was lighter than dark. She flashed a smile at him from her broad mouth as he came up, though her knowing gray eyes did not join in this smile. He knew instantly that she was taking him in. This girl was wise beyond her years, he thought, but one even far less knowing could hardly have been in two minds about his present abject condition. The pushed-up collar of his coat did not entirely hide the once-white collar beneath it, the beard had reached its perhaps most distressing stage of development, and the suit was rumpled out of all the nattiness for which it had been advertised. Even the plush hat had lost its smart air. Then he plainly saw that the girl would, for the moment at least, ignore these phenomena. She laughed again, and this time the eyes laughed, too. "C'mon over and help me hunt for that bar pin I lost. It must be at this end, because I know I had it on when I went into the drink. Maybe it's in the pool, but maybe I lost it after I got out. It's one of Baxter's that she wore in the scene just ahead of last night, and she'll have to have it again to-day. Now—" She began to search the ground around the cold brazier. "It might be along here." He helped her look. Pretty soon he would remember an engagement and get away. The search at the end of the pool proved fruitless. The girl continued to chatter. They had worked until one-thirty before that grouch of a Rosenblatt would call it a day. At that she'd rather do water stuff than animal stuff-especially lions. "Lions? I should think so!" He replied to this. "Dangerous, isn't it?" "Oh, it ain't that. They're nothing to be afraid of if you know 'em, but they're so hot and smelly when you have to get close to 'em. Anything I really hate, it's having to get up against a big, hot, hairy, smelly lion." He murmured a sympathetic phrase and extended his search for the lost pin to the side of the pool. Almost under the scaffold he saw the shine of precious stones and called to her as he picked up the pin, a bar pin splendidly set with diamonds. He was glad that he had found it for her. It must have cost a great deal of money and she would doubtless be held responsible for its safe-keeping. She came dancing to him. "Say, that's fine-your eyes are working, ain't they? I might 'a' been set back a good six dollars if you hadn't found that." She took the bauble and fastened it inside her jacket. So the pin, too, had been a tawdry makeshift. Nothing was real any more. As she adjusted the pin he saw his moment for escape. With a gallant striving for the true Clifford Armytage manner he raised the plush hat. "Well, I'm glad you found Mrs. Rosenblatt's pin-and I guess I'll be getting on." The manner must have been defective. She looked through him and said with great firmness, "Nothing like that, old pippin." Again he was taken with a violent fit of shivering. He could not meet her eyes. He was turning away when she seized him by the wrist. Her grip was amazingly forceful. He doubted if he could break away even with his stoutest effort. He stood miserably staring at the ground. Suddenly the girl reached up to pat his shoulder. He shivered again and she continued to pat it. When his teeth had ceased to be castanets she spoke: "Listen here, old Kid, you can't fool any one, so quit trying. Don't you s'pose I've seen 'em like you before? Say, boy, I was trouping while you played with marbles. You're up against it. Now, c'mon"—with the arm at his shoulder she pulled him about to face her-"c'mon and be nice-tell mother all about it." The late Clifford Armytage was momentarily menaced by a complete emotional overthrow. Another paroxysm of shivering perhaps averted this humiliation. The girl dropped his wrist, turned, stooped, and did something. He recalled the scene in the gambling hell, only this time she fronted away from the camera. When she faced him again he was not surprised to see bills in her hand. It could only have been the chill he suffered that kept him from blushing. She forced the bills into his numb fingers and he stared at them blankly. "I can't take these," he muttered. "There, now, there, now! Be easy. Naturally I know you're all right or I wouldn't give up this way. You're just having a run of hard luck. The Lord knows, I've been helped out often enough in my time. Say, listen, I'll never forget when I went out as a kid with Her First False Step-they had lions in that show. It was a frost from the start. No salaries, no nothing. I got a big laugh one day when I was late at rehearsal. The manager says: 'You're fined two dollars, Miss Montague.' I says, 'All right, Mr. Gratz, but you'll have to wait till I can write home for the money.' Even Gratz had to laugh. Anyway, the show went bust and I never would 'a' got any place if two or three parties hadn't of helped me out here and there, just the same as I'm doing with you this minute. So don't be foolish." "Well-you see-I don't—" He broke off from nervous weakness. In his mind was a jumble of incongruous sentences and he seemed unable to manage any of them. The girl now sent a clean shot through his armour. "When'd you eat last?" He looked at the ground again in painful embarrassment. Even in the chill air he was beginning to feel hot. "I don't remember," he said at last quite honestly. "That's what I thought. You go eat. Go to Mother Haggin's, that cafeteria just outside the gate. She has better breakfast things than the place on the lot." Against his will the vision of a breakfast enthralled him, yet even under this exaltation an instinct of the wariest caution survived. "I'll go to the one on the lot, I guess. If I went out to the other one I couldn't get in again." She smiled suddenly, with puzzling lights in her eyes. "Well, of all things! You want to get in again, do you? Say, wouldn't that beat the hot place a mile? You want to get in again? All right, Old-timer, I'll go out with you and after you've fed I'll cue you on to the lot again." "Well-if it ain't taking you out of your way." He knew that the girl was somehow humouring him, as if he were a sick child. She knew, and he knew, that the lot was no longer any place for him until he could be rightly there. "No, c'mon, I'll stay by you." They walked up the street of the Western village. The girl had started at a brisk pace and he was presently breathless. "I guess I'll have to rest a minute," he said. They were now before the Crystal Palace Hotel and he sat on the steps. "All in, are you? Well, take it easy." He was not only all in, but his mind still played with incongruous sentences. He heard himself saying things that must sound foolish. "I've slept in here a lot," he volunteered. The girl went to look through one of the windows. "Blankets!" she exclaimed. "Well, you got the makings of a trouper in you, I'll say that. Where else did you sleep?" "Well, there were two miners had a nice cabin down the street here with bunks and blankets, and they had a fight, and half a kettle of beans and some bread, and one of them shaved and I used his razor, but I haven't shaved since because I only had twenty cents day before yesterday, and anyway they might think I was growing them for a part, the way your father did, but I moved up here when I saw them put the blankets in, and I was careful and put them back every morning. I didn't do any harm, do you think? And I got the rest of the beans they'd thrown into the fireplace, and if I'd only known it I could have brought my razor and overcoat and some clean collars, but somehow you never seem to know when—" He broke off, eyeing her vaguely. He had little notion what he had been saying or what he would say next. "This is going to be good," said the Montague girl. "I can see that from here. But now you c'mon-we'll walk slow-and you tell me the rest when you've had a little snack." She even helped him to rise, with a hand under his elbow, though he was quick to show her that he had not needed this help. "I can walk all right," he assured her. "Of course you can. You're as strong as a horse. But we needn't go too fast." She took his arm in a friendly way as they completed the journey to the outside cafeteria. At this early hour they were the only patrons of the place. Miss Montague, a little with the air of a solicitous nurse, seated her charge at a corner table and took the place opposite him. "What's it going to be?" she demanded. Visions of rich food raced madly through his awakened mind, wide platters heaped with sausage and steaks and ham and corned-beef hash. "Steak," he ventured, "and something like ham and eggs and some hot cakes and coffee and—" He broke off. He was becoming too emotional under this golden spread of opportunity. The girl glanced up from the bill of fare and appraised the wild light in his eyes. "One minute, Kid-let's be more restful at first. You know-kind of ease into the heavy eats. It'll prob'ly be better for you." "Anything you say," he conceded. Her words of caution had stricken him with a fear that this was a dream; that he would wake up under blankets back in the Crystal Palace. It was like that in dreams. You seemed able to order all sorts of food, but something happened; it never reached the table. He would take no further initiative in this scene, whether dream or reality. "You order something," he concluded. His eyes trustfully sought the girl's. "Well, I think you'll start with one orange, just to kind of hint to the old works that something good is coming. Then—lemme see"—she considered gravely. "Then I guess about two soft-boiled eggs—no, you can stand three—and some dry toast and some coffee. Maybe a few thin strips of bacon wouldn't hurt. We'll see can you make the grade." She turned to give the order to a waitress. "And shoot the coffee along, sister. A cup for me, too." Her charge shivered again at the mere mention of coffee. The juncture was critical. He might still be dreaming, but in another moment he must know. He closely, even coolly, watched the two cups of coffee that were placed before them. He put a benumbed hand around the cup in front of him and felt it burn. It was too active a sensation for mere dreaming. He put sugar into the cup and poured in the cream from a miniature pitcher, inhaling a very real aroma. Events thus far seemed normal. He stirred the coffee and started to raise the cup. Now, after all, it seemed to be a dream. His hand shook so that the stuff spilled into the saucer and even out on to the table. Always in dreams you were thwarted at the last moment. The Montague girl had noted the trembling and ineffective hand. She turned her back upon him to chat with the waitress over by the food counter. With no eye upon him, he put both hands about the cup and succeeded in raising it to his lips. The hands were still shaky, but he managed some sips of the stuff, and then a long draught that seemed to scald him. He wasn't sure if it scalded or not. It was pretty hot, and fire ran through him. He drained the cup—still holding it with both hands. It was an amazing sensation to have one's hand refuse to obey so simple an order. Maybe he would always be that way now, practically a cripple. The girl turned back to him. "Atta boy," she said. "Now take the orange. And when the toast comes you can have some more coffee." A dread load was off his mind. He did not dream this thing. He ate the orange, and ate wonderful toast to the accompaniment of another cup of coffee. The latter half of this he managed with but one hand, though it was not yet wholly under control. The three eggs seemed like but one. He thought they must have been small eggs. More toast was commanded and more coffee. "Easy, easy!" cautioned his watchful hostess from time to time. "Don't wolf it—you'll feel better afterwards." "I feel better already," he announced. "Well," the girl eyed him critically, "you certainly got the main chandelier lighted up once more." A strange exhilaration flooded all his being. His own thoughts babbled to him, and he presently began to babble to his new friend. "You remind me so much of Tessie Kearns," he said as he scraped the sides of the egg cup. "Who's she?" "Oh, she's a scenario writer I know. You're just like her." He was now drunk—maudlin drunk—from the coffee. Sober, he would have known that no human beings could be less alike than Tessie Kearns and the Montague girl. Other walls of his reserve went down. "Of course I could have written to Gashwiler and got some money to go back there—" "Gashwiler, Gashwiler?" The girl seemed to search her memory. "I thought I knew all the tank towns, but that's a new one. Where is it?" "It isn't a town; it's a gentleman I had a position with, and he said he'd keep it open for me." He flew to another thought with the inconsequence of the drunken. "Say, Kid"—He had even caught that form of address from her—"I'll tell you. You can keep this watch of mine till I pay you back this money." He drew it out. "It's a good solid-gold watch and everything. My uncle Sylvester gave it to me for not smoking, on my eighteenth birthday. He smoked, himself; he even drank considerable. He was his own worst enemy. But you can see it's a good solid—gold watch and keeps time, and you hold it till I pay you back, will you?" The girl took the watch, examining it carefully, noting the inscription engraved on the case. There were puzzling glints in her eyes as she handed it back to him. "No; I'll tell you, it'll be my watch until you pay me back, but you keep it for me. I haven't any place to carry it except the pocket of my jacket, and I might lose it, and then where'd we be?" "Well, all right." He cheerfully took back the watch. His present ecstasy would find him agreeable to all proposals. "And say," continued the girl, "what about this Gashweiler, or whatever his name is? He said he'd take you back, did he? A farm?" "No, an emporium—and you forgot his name just the way that lady in the casting office always does. She's funny. Keeps telling me not to forget the address, when of course I couldn't forget the town where I lived, could I? Of course it's a little town, but you wouldn't forget it when you lived there a long time—not when you got your start there." "So you got your start in this town, did you?" He wanted to talk a lot now. He prattled of the town and his life there, of the eight-hour talent-tester and the course in movie-acting. Of Tessie Kearns and her scenarios, not yet prized as they were sure to be later. Of Lowell Hardy, the artistic photographer, and the stills that he had made of the speaker as Clifford Armytage. Didn't she think that was a better stage name than Merton Gill, which didn't seem to sound like so much? Anyway, he wished he had his stills here to show her. Of course some of them were just in society parts, the sort of thing that Harold Parmalee played—had she noticed that he looked a good deal like Harold Parmalee? Lots of people had. Tessie Kearns thought he was the dead image of Parmalee. But he liked Western stuff better—a lot better than cabaret stuff where you had to smoke one cigarette after another—and he wished she could see the stills in the Buck Benson outfit, chaps and sombrero and spurs and holster. He'd never had two guns, but the one he did have he could draw pretty well. There would be his hand at his side, and in a flash he would have the gun in it, ready to shoot from the hip. And roping—he'd need to practise that some. Once he got it smack over Dexter's head, but usually it didn't go so well. Probably a new clothesline didn't make the best rope—too stiff. He could probably do a lot better with one of those hair ropes that the real cowboys used. And Metta Judson—she was the best cook anywhere around Simsbury. He mustn't forget to write to Metta, and to Tessie Kearns, to be sure and see The Blight of Broadway when it came to the Bijou Palace. They would be surprised to see those close—ups that Henshaw had used him in. And he was in that other picture. No close-ups in that, still he would show pretty well in the cage-scene—he'd had to smoke a few cigarettes there, because Arabs smoke all the time, and he hadn't been in the later scene where the girl and the young fellow were in the deserted tomb all night and he didn't lay a finger on her because he was a perfect gentleman. He didn't know what he would do next. Maybe Henshaw would want him in Robinson Crusoe, Junior, where Friday's sister turned out to be the daughter of an English earl with her monogram tattooed on her left shoulder. He would ask Henshaw, anyway. The Montague girl listened attentively to the long, wandering recital. At times she would seem to be strongly moved, to tears or something. But mostly she listened with a sympathetic smile, or perhaps with a perfectly rigid face, though at such moments there would be those curious glints of light far back in her gray eyes. Occasionally she would prompt him with a question. In this way she brought out his version of the Sabbath afternoon experience with Dexter. He spared none of the details, for he was all frankness now. He even told how ashamed he had felt having to lead Dexter home from his scandalous grazing before the Methodist Church. He had longed to leap upon the horse and ride him back at a gallop, but he had been unable to do this because there was nothing from which to climb on him, and probably he would have been afraid to gallop the beast, anyway. This had been one of the bits that most strangely moved his listener. Her eyes were moist when he had finished, and some strong emotion seemed about to overpower her, but she had recovered command of herself, and become again the sympathetic provider and counsellor. He would have continued to talk, apparently, for the influence of strong drink had not begun to wane, but the girl at length stopped him. "Listen here, Merton—" she began; her voice was choked to a peculiar hoarseness and she seemed to be threatened with a return of her late strong emotion. She was plainly uncertain of her control, fearing to trust herself to speech, but presently, after efforts which he observed with warmest sympathy, she seemed to recover her poise. She swallowed earnestly several times, wiped her moisture—dimmed eyes with her handkerchief, and continued, "It's getting late and I've got to be over at the show shop. So I'll tell you what to do next. You go out and get a shave and a haircut and then go home and get cleaned up—you said you had a room and other clothes, didn't you?" Volubly he told her about the room at Mrs. Patterson's, and, with a brief return of lucidity, how the sum of ten dollars was now due this heartless society woman who might insist upon its payment before he would again enjoy free access to his excellent wardrobe. "Well, lemme see—" She debated a moment, then reached under the table, fumbled obscurely, and came up with more money. "Now, here, here's twenty more besides that first I gave you, so you can pay the dame her money and get all fixed up again, fresh suit and clean collar and a shine and everything. No, no—this is my scene; you stay out." He had waved protestingly at sight of the new money, and now again he blushed. "That's all understood," she continued. "I'm staking you to cakes till you get on your feet, see? And I know you're honest, so I'm not throwing my money away. There—sink it and forget it. Now, you go out and do what I said, the barber first. And lay off the eats until about noon. You had enough for now. By noon you can stoke up with meat and potatoes—anything you want that'll stick to the merry old slats. And I'd take milk instead of any more coffee. You've thinned down some—you're not near so plump as Harold Parmalee. Then you rest up for the balance of the day, and you show here to-morrow morning about this time. Do you get it? The Countess'll let you in. Tell her I said to, and come over to the office building. See?" He tried to tell her his gratitude, but instead he babbled again of how much she was like Tessie Kearns. They parted at the gate. With a last wondering scrutiny of him, a last reminder of her very minute directions, she suddenly illumined him with rays of a compassion that was somehow half-laughter. "You poor, feckless dub!" she pronounced as she turned from him to dance through the gate. He scarcely heard the words; her look and tone had been so warming. Ten minutes later he was telling a barber that he had just finished a hard week on the Holden lot, and that he was glad to get the brush off at last. From the barber's he hastened to the Patterson house, rather dreading the encounter with one to whom he owed so much money. He found the house locked. Probably both of the Pattersons had gone out into society. He let himself in and began to follow the directions of the Montague girl. The bath, clean linen, the other belted suit, already pressed, the other shoes, the buttoned, cloth-topped ones, already polished! He felt now more equal to the encounter with a heartless society woman. But, as she did not return, he went out in obedience to a new hunger. In the most sumptuous cafeteria he knew of, one patronized only in his first careless days of opulence, he ate for a long time. Roast beef and potatoes he ordered twice, nor did he forget to drink the milk prescribed by his benefactress. Plenty of milk would make him more than ever resemble Harold Parmalee. And he commanded an abundance of dessert: lemon pie and apple pie and a double portion of chocolate cake with ice-cream. His craving for sweets was still unappeased, so at a near-by drug store he bought a pound box of candy. The world was again under his feet. Restored to his rightful domain, he trod it with lightness and certainty. His mind was still a pleasant jumble of money and food and the Montague girl. Miles of gorgeous film flickered across his vision. An experienced alcoholic would have told him that he enjoyed a coffee "hang-over." He wended a lordly way to the nearest motion-picture theatre. Billed there was the tenth installment of The Hazards of Hortense. He passed before the lively portrayal in colours of Hortense driving a motor car off an open drawbridge. The car was already halfway between the bridge and the water beneath. He sneered openly at the announcement: "Beulah Baxter in the Sensational Surprise Picture of the Century." A surprise picture indeed, if those now entering the theatre could be told what he knew about it! He considered spreading the news, but decided to retain the superiority his secret knowledge gave him. Inside the theatre, eating diligently from his box of candy, he was compelled to endure another of the unspeakable Buckeye comedies. The cross-eyed man was a lifeguard at a beach and there were social entanglements involving a bearded father, his daughter in an inconsiderable bathing suit, a confirmed dipsomaniac, two social derelicts who had to live by their wits, and a dozen young girls also arrayed in inconsiderable bathing suits. He could scarcely follow the chain of events, so illogical were they, and indeed made little effort to do so. He felt far above the audience that cackled at these dreadful buffooneries. One subtitle read: "I hate to kill him—murder is so hard to explain." This sort of thing, he felt more than ever, degraded an art where earnest people were suffering and sacrificing in order to give the public something better and finer. Had he not, himself, that very day, completed a perilous ordeal of suffering and sacrifice? And he was asked to laugh at a cross—eyed man posing before a camera that fell to pieces when the lens was exposed, shattered, presumably, by the impact of the afflicted creature's image! This, surely, was not art such as Clifford Armytage was rapidly fitting himself, by trial and hardship, to confer upon the public. It was with curiously conflicting emotions that he watched the ensuing Hazards of Hortense. He had to remind himself that the slim little girl with the wistful eyes was not only not performing certain feats of daring that the film exposed, but that she was Mrs. Sigmund Rosenblatt and crazy about her husband. Yet the magic had not wholly departed from this wronged heroine. He thought perhaps this might be because he now knew, and actually liked, that talkative Montague girl who would be doing the choice bits of this drama. Certainly he was loyal to the hand that fed him. Black Steve and his base crew, hirelings of the scoundrelly guardian who was "a Power in Wall Street," again and again seemed to have encompassed the ruin, body and soul, of the persecuted Hortense. They had her prisoner in a foul den of Chinatown, whence she escaped to balance precariously upon the narrow cornice of a skyscraper, hundreds of feet above a crowded thoroughfare. They had her, as the screen said, "Depressed by the Grim Menace of Tragedy that Impended in the Shadows." They gave her a brief respite in one of those gilded resorts "Where the Clink of Coin Opens Wide the Portals of Pleasure, Where Wealth Beckons with Golden Fingers," but this was only a trap for the unsuspecting girl, who was presently, sewed in a plain sack, tossed from the stern of an ocean liner far out at sea by creatures who would do anything for money—who, so it was said, were Remorseless in the Mad Pursuit of Gain. At certain gripping moments it became apparent to one of the audience that Mrs. Sigmund Rosenblatt herself was no longer in jeopardy. He knew the girl who was, and profoundly admired her artistry as she fled along the narrow cornice of the skyscraper. For all purposes she was Beulah Baxter. He recalled her figure as being—not exactly stubby, but at least not of marked slenderness. Yet in the distance she was indeed all that an audience could demand. And she was honest, while Mrs. Rosenblatt, in the Majestic Theatre at Peoria, Illinois, had trifled airily with his faith in women and deceived him by word of mouth. He applauded loudly at the sensational finish, when Hortense, driving her motor car at high speed across the great bridge, ran into the draw, that opened too late for her to slow down, and plunged to the cruel waters far below. Mrs. Rosenblatt would possibly have been a fool to do this herself. The Montague girl had been insistent on that point; there were enough things she couldn't avoid doing, and all stars very sensibly had doubles for such scenes when distance or action permitted. At the same time, he could never again feel the same toward her. Indeed, he would never have felt the same even had there been no Rosenblatt. Art was art! It was only five o'clock when he left the picture theatre, but he ate again at the luxurious cafeteria. He ate a large steak, drank an immense quantity of milk, and bought another box of candy on his way to the Patterson home. Lights were on there, and he went in to face the woman he had so long kept out of her money. She would probably greet him coldly and tell him she was surprised at his actions. Yet it seemed that he had been deceived in this society woman. She was human, after all. She shook hands with him warmly and said they were glad to see him back; he must have been out on location, and she was glad they were not to lose him, because he was so quiet and regular and not like some other motion-picture actors she had known. He told her he had just put in a hard week on the Holden lot, where things were beginning to pick up. He was glad she had missed him, and he certainly had missed his comfortable room, because the accommodations on the lot were not of the best. In fact, they were pretty unsatisfactory, if you came right down to it, and he hoped they wouldn't keep him there again. And, oh, yes—he was almost forgetting. Here was ten dollars—he believed there were two weeks' rent now due. He passed over the money with rather a Clifford Armytage flourish. Mrs. Patterson accepted the bill almost protestingly. She hadn't once thought about the rent, because she knew he was reliable, and he was to remember that any time convenient to him would always suit her in these matters. She did accept the bill, still she was not the heartless creature he had supposed her to be. As he bade her good-night at the door she regarded him closely and said, "Somehow you look a whole lot older, Mr. Armytage." "I am," replied Mr. Armytage. * * * * * * * Miss Montague, after parting with her protege had walked quickly, not without little recurrent dance steps—as if some excess of joy would ever and again overwhelm her—to the long office building on the Holden lot, where she entered a door marked "Buckeye Comedies. Jeff Baird, Manager." The outer office was vacant, but through the open door to another room she observed Baird at his desk, his head bent low over certain sheets of yellow paper. He was a bulky, rather phlegmatic looking man, with a parrot-like crest of gray hair. He did not look up as the girl entered. She stood a moment as if to control her excitement, then spoke. "Jeff, I found a million dollars for you this morning." "Thanks!" said Mr. Baird, still not looking up. "Chuck it down in the coal cellar, will you? We're littered with the stuff up here." "On the level, Jeff." Baird looked up. "On the level?" "You'll say so." "Shoot!" "Well, he's a small-town hick that saved up seventy-two dollars to come here from Goosewallow, Michigan, to go into pictures-took a correspondence course in screen—acting and all that, and he went broke and slept in a property room down in the village all last week; no eats at all for three, four days. I'd noticed him around the lot on different sets; something about him that makes you look a second time. I don't know what it is-kind of innocent and bug-eyed the way he'd rubber at things, but all the time like as if he thought he was someone. Well, I keep running across him and pretty soon I notice he's up against it. He still thinks he's someone, and is very up-stage if you start to kid him the least bit, but the signs are there, all right. He's up against it good and hard. "All last week he got to looking worse and worse. But he still had his stage presence. Say, yesterday he looked like the juvenile lead of a busted road show that has walked in from Albany and was just standing around on Broadway wondering who he'd consent to sign up with for forty weeks—see what I mean?-hungry but proud. He was over on the Baxter set last night while I was doing the water stuff, and you'd ought to see him freeze me when I suggested a sandwich and a cup o' coffee. It was grand. "Well, this morning I'm back for a bar pin of Baxter's I'd lost, and there he is again, no overcoat, shivering his teeth loose, and all in. So I fell for him. Took him up for some coffee and eggs, staked him to his room rent, and sent him off to get cleaned and barbered. But before he went he cut loose and told me his history from the cradle to Hollywood. "I'd 'a' given something good if you'd been at the next table. I guess he got kind of jagged on the food, see? He'd tell me anything that run in his mind, and most of it was good. You'll say so. I'll get him to do it for you sometime. Of all the funny nuts that make this lot! Well, take my word for it; that's all I ask. And listen here, Jeff—I'm down to cases. There's something about this kid, like when I tell you I'd always look at him twice. And it's something rich that I won't let out for a minute or two. But here's what you and me do, right quick: "The kid was in that cabaret and gambling-house stuff they shot last week for The Blight of Broadway, and this something that makes you look at him must of struck Henshaw the way it did me, for he let him stay right at the edge of the dance floor and took a lot of close-ups of him looking tired to death of the gay night life. Well, you call up the Victor folks and ask can you get a look at that stuff because you're thinking of giving a part to one of the extras that worked in it. Maybe we can get into the projection room right away and you'll see what I mean. Then I won't have to tell you the richest thing about it. Now!"—she took a long breath—"will you?" Baird had listened with mild interest to the recital, occasionally seeming not to listen while he altered the script before him. But he took the telephone receiver from its hook and said briefly to the girl: "You win. Hello! Give me the Victor office. Hello! Mr. Baird speaking—" The two were presently in the dark projection room watching the scenes the girl had told of. "They haven't started cutting yet," she said delightedly. "All his close-ups will be in. Goody! There's the lad-get him? Ain't he the actin'est thing you ever saw? Now wait-you'll see others." Baird watched the film absorbedly. Three times it was run for the sole purpose of exposing to this small audience Merton Gill's notion of being consumed with ennui among pleasures that had palled. In the gambling-hall bit it could be observed that he thought not too well of cigarettes. "He screens well, too," remarked the girl. "Of course I couldn't be sure of that." "He screens all right," agreed Baird. "Well, what do you think?" "I think he looks like the first plume on a hearse." "He looks all of that, but try again. Who does he remind you of? Catch this next one in the gambling hell—get the profile and the eyebrows and the chin—there!" "Why—" Baird chuckled. "I'm a Swede if he don't look like—" "You got it!" the girl broke in excitedly. "I knew you would. I didn't at first, this morning, because he was so hungry and needed a shave, and he darned near had me bawling when he couldn't hold his cup o' coffee except with two hands. But what d'you think?—pretty soon he tells me himself that he looks a great deal like Harold Parmalee and wouldn't mind playing parts like Parmalee, though he prefers Western stuff. Wouldn't that get you?" The film was run again so that Baird could study the Gill face in the light of this new knowledge. "He does, he does, he certainly does—if he don't look like a No. 9 company of Parmalee I'll eat that film. Say, Flips, you did find something." "Oh, I knew it; didn't I tell you so?" "But, listen—does he know he's funny?" "Not in a thousand years! He doesn't know anything's funny, near as I can make him." They were out in the light again, walking slowly back to the Buckeye offices. "Get this," said Baird seriously. "You may think I'm kidding, but only yesterday I was trying to think if I couldn't dig up some guy that looked more like Parmalee than Parmalee himself does—just enough more to get the laugh, see? And you spring this lad on me. All he needs is the eyebrows worked up a little bit. But how about him—will he handle? Because if he will I'll use him in the new five-reeler." "Will he handle?" Miss Montague echoed the words with deep emphasis. "Leave him to me. He's got to handle. I already got twenty-five bucks invested in his screen career. And, Jeff, he'll be easy to work, except he don't know he's funny. If he found out he was, it might queer him—see what I mean? He's one of that kind—you can tell it. How will you use him? He could never do Buckeye stuff." "Sure not. But ain't I told you? In this new piece Jack is stage struck and gets a job as valet to a ham that's just about Parmalee's type, and we show Parmalee acting in the screen, but all straight stuff, you understand. Unless he's a wise guy he'll go all through the piece and never get on that it's funny. See, his part's dead straight and serious in a regular drama, and the less he thinks he's funny the bigger scream he'll be. He's got to be Harold Parmalee acting right out, all over the set, as serious as the lumbago—get what I mean?" "I got you," said the girl, "and you'll get him to-morrow morning. I told him to be over with his stills. And he'll be serious all the time, make no mistake there. He's no wise guy. And one thing, Jeff, he's as innocent as a cup—custard, so you'll have to keep that bunch of Buckeye roughnecks from riding him. I can tell you that much. Once they started kidding him, it would be all off." "And, besides—" She hesitated briefly. "Somehow I don't want him kidded. I'm pretty hard-boiled, but he sort of made me feel like a fifty-year-old mother watching her only boy go out into the rough world. See?" "I'll watch out for that," said Baird. <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

1 of 2

2 of 2

Update Required To play the media you will need to either update your browser to a recent version or update your Flash plugin.